I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like me to call a guy that I’d fucked before, that was for sure. I had sincerely hoped never to talk to Ralph again.
“I thought you were a pretty sweet lay.”
“Really. I seem to remember you had a hard time keeping an erection.”
“Ouch,” he said. “Why did you call me?”
“I told you why.”
He was quiet.
“Okay, look,” I said. “There’s a case I’m working where two girls have gone missing, and they both left everything behind except their bedsheets. I’ve been racking my brain trying to come up with a connection between these two girls, and then my friend at the bar says something about serial killers, and it makes me think of you. I feel like you said something about a killer who wouldn’t use a pattern.”
“No, I think you said that,” he said. “Really, I’m not sure I can help you. I don’t know anything about that kind of stuff. I’m just a trucker. If you don’t want to hook up again, then maybe you should just work on this on your own.”
Damn it. Now, I’d pissed him off. I took a deep breath, making my voice soft. “I’m sorry, Ralph. I did have a good time that night when all was said and done. But I was just hoping you could help me refresh my memory.”
“Well, I don’t know,” he said. He didn’t sound charmed. “You acted like you had serial killers all figured out anyway. You said it was always sexual, and it was always about control.”
“Right…” I said, remembering. “But what if it wasn’t? What if it was just about killing and opportunity?”
“Look,” said Ralph, “I’m sure all this is really interesting to you, but I’m driving right now, so…”
“I guess I shouldn’t have bothered you,” I said.
“No, it’s okay, sweetheart. If you change your mind, you could always come see me. I’d make sure you had a good time again.”
“Well, that’s a nice offer, Ralph, but…”
“Thanks, but no thanks?”
“I’m just busy with the case.”
He laughed in my ear. “You’re a strange one, lady. Even when I took you out of that bar, I thought, This chick wants it bad and she doesn’t care where she gets it. You’re like a man stuck in a woman’s body, huh?”
“Thanks again for your time, Ralph,” I said.
* * *
“Ivy?” said Miles. He was in the doorway to his apartment in Renmawr. I’d driven all the way out here to see him.
“I need to run something by you,” I said.
He just stared at me.
“It’s about this case that you’ve got me working on.”
“I don’t have you working on anything. I thought you got yourself fired from that case.”
“Well, I got rehired. I think I’m onto something big here, Miles.”
“So, you drove to my house?’
“Is there someone else in there with you or something?”
He stepped away from the door. “No, I’m alone. Come in, I guess. I just thought…”
I came inside, moving past him. “Thanks.” I started into the apartment. I’d been here lots of times when we were dating, and I knew my way around. Miles’s apartment was always spotless, but it was sparse. He didn’t seem particularly interested in decoration, and what decoration he did have seemed out of place.
I went down the hallway into the living room, where Miles had two nice black leather couches and a decent-sized TV hanging on the wall. The only other thing hanging on the wall was a framed Star Wars poster. Miles also had a cluster of Star Wars figurines on a shelf on the opposite wall. The effect was strange—half twelve-year-old boy and half sophisticated lieutenant.
“I thought we agreed not to go to each other’s houses anymore,” he said from the doorway to the living room.
“Oh, this isn’t about us, Miles,” I said, turning to him. “Like I said, it’s about the case.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, okay.”
“Look, what do you know about serial killers?”
“Not much. We’ve never had anything like that in Renmawr. I personally haven’t investigated anything. You’re saying the two missing people are the work of a serial killer? Because I guess I could see that.”
“Not just any serial killer,” I said. “A different kind of serial killer.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Can you access the database, please?”
“What are you going on about?”
“Just log in for me. I want to check something out.” I picked up his laptop off the coffee table and handed it to him. “Please?”
He sighed. “I swear to God, Ivy, I have no idea what you’re going on about.” But he settled down on his couch and began typing on his laptop. Within a few minutes, he turned the screen to face me. He was logged in to the police database.
Eagerly, I snatched the computer from him and sat down. I began typing in search criteria. I grinned as the first set of results came back.
“What?” he said.
“Look,” I said. “All up and down the highway, some going back years.”
“What are you looking at?” He snatched the computer back from me and scrutinized the screen. “Ivy, these are unrelated, unsolved missing persons cases. There’s nothing here to connect them.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“Exactly?”
“Serial killers usually have a pattern, right? They pick out certain people, and they have a little ritual for the way that they kill them, and it’s all got something to do with their messed up childhoods or something.”
“I don’t know about the messed-up childhood thing, but yeah, serial killers do have a pattern.”
“Well, what if a serial killer didn’t?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Okay, just imagine that you’re a person who likes to kill people. And you want to be able to do just that. Kill. That’s all. You don’t want to rape them or pose their bodies or play with their corpses. You just want to kill people. So, the best way to do that and not get caught would be to pick random victims, right?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But no one just likes to kill. You’re describing some character from a slasher movie. They don’t exist.”
“Or maybe they do exist, and we never catch them because they don’t leave nice patterns for us to follow.”
Miles licked his lips, looking thoughtful.
“Okay, so think about it,” I said. “A couple weeks ago, I had sex with this trucker.”
He cringed. “Ivy, I don’t want to know—”
“Okay, forget the sex part. Just think about being a trucker. If you were a serial killer who just liked to kill people, you could go up and down the highway, and break into people’s houses and kill them.”
“Maybe, but—”
“No, I was wracking my brain trying to think of what these two girls have in common, and I was grasping at straws. Coincidences. And then it hit me. What do they have in common? Their houses are both right off the interstate. Easy access. I figure this guy drives up and down the interstate and stops on various exits. Then he wanders around, finding houses that are easy to break into, and he takes the girls.”
“And you think he’s a trucker?”
“Well, he could be. That’s not important. It was only because the trucker made me think—”
“Right, you just had to bring up your sex life.” He glared at me.
“Miles, about the theory?”
He massaged the bridge of his nose. “It’s worse than the incestuous brother in terms of proof, Ivy.”
“But that’s the point,” I said. “He doesn’t leave any evidence. That’s what makes him such a good killer.”
“What do you want me to do with this? If you’re right, this guy is responsible for all of these disappearances.” He gestured to the computer screen. “And on top of that, he’s got no connection to any of these people. How am I supposed to find him? How are you supposed to find
him?”
I rubbed my forehead. “Well…”
“Didn’t think about that, did you?”
“I just… got excited.”
“Like when you got excited and got mixed up with the O’Shaunessys and they beat you to a pulp.” He shut the laptop. “You’re right, Ivy. You are impulsive. You’re not methodical at all.”
I was thrown for a minute, but then I remembered the conversation we’d had before in his office about my various flaws. “You’re hung up on the fact that I had sex with a trucker, aren’t you? You aren’t listening to my theory at all.”
“I did listen to your theory. It’s just a useless, unprovable theory. If you’re right, you’re at a dead end. You’d better hope you’re not right.”
Oh, hell. Maybe he was right. I got up off his couch and wandered over to his Star Wars figurines. I knew better than to touch them, so I just stared at the tiny Boba Fett and Princess Leia.
“Is this really why you came over here?” he asked, his voice quiet.
I didn’t turn around. “Yes.”
“Why? What did you think would happen after you explained your hair-brained hunch to me?”
“I thought you’d help me figure out how to prove it. I thought you’d help me figure out how to track the guy down. I thought we’d get him. We’d lock him up.”
He laughed caustically. “Tonight?”
“No, but over time. I thought…” I looked over my shoulder. “That is what we do, isn’t it, Miles? That’s the most important thing to both of us. Catching bad guys.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “You shouldn’t have come to my house. We said we wouldn’t come to each other’s houses anymore. Why are you here?” His voice cracked.
“Is it really such a big deal?” I went back to looking at the figurines.
“It feels… It reminds me of before.”
“Well, do you want me to leave?”
“No.”
I turned around.
He was halfway across the room. He held out his hand to me.
“Miles…”
He closed the distance between us and picked up my hand. “I want to…” He kissed me.
The kiss was his typical kiss, closemouthed and perfunctory. There was sweetness behind it, wistful innocence even. But there wasn’t any passion. If Miles had passion, he saved it for his work. Not that I minded. I was pretty passionate about my work as well. Still, there was something missing from his kiss, and it hurt. It always made me feel as if I wasn’t enough for him, as if he was distracted by something else, and he couldn’t give his entire self to kissing me.
He pulled back. “I want to try it again.”
“Try what again?”
“You know what.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Because you want a family.”
“Because I want you.”
I bit down on my lip. “I don’t know.”
“If I could make love to you,” he said, “then we could be a normal couple.”
“Maybe before,” I said. “Maybe back when I was still on the force—”
“Maybe we could fix that too.”
“Miles, I got fired.”
“Well, whatever. The thing is, I want you back. I don’t want it like this. I want it to work. Let’s try it again.”
“Last time we tried—”
“You don’t want me, do you?”
“It seemed to… bother you last time.”
“Just say you’ll try.” He gazed into my eyes, and his stare was so intense, and he was handsome, and he was the man that I’d fallen in love with all that time ago, and I’d wanted this at one point in time. I’d wanted this more than anything on earth.
So, I nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay.” He took a deep breath and took a step away from me. We were still holding hands, so he tugged on me.
“Right now?” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Before I lose my nerve.”
“But, um, about my serial killer.”
“Jesus, Ivy, the serial killer’s a dead end. We both know you came here to see me, not because you wanted to talk about that case.”
But I had come because I wanted to talk about the case. Still, it seemed rude to say that now. Especially when he was willing to do this thing that he had never been willing to do before.
When we had talked about it during our relationship, he’d simply said that he didn’t have a sex drive. He wasn’t like other people that way. When he thought about sex, he just thought it sounded overly complicated, exerting, and messy.
Miles was a virgin. He identified as asexual.
He didn’t even like the idea of sex. Now, he was offering…
“I don’t want you to do this for me,” I said. “We’re not even together.”
“It’s for me,” he said, backing up, tugging me in the direction of his bedroom. “I want this. I’m sick of being a freak. Everyone else on earth can do this. I want to do it too.”
“But you don’t like it.”
“Well, I haven’t actually tried it,” he said as we moved out of the living room and back the hallway. “Didn’t you say that to me once? Didn’t you say I should try it before I gave up on it completely?”
“That was before the time we did try,” I said. I remembered how awkward and awful that had been, Miles seemingly disgusted by the sight of my body, unwilling to touch me, unwilling for me to touch him. It hadn’t been much of an attempt. “I don’t need you to do it.”
He stopped in the middle of the hallway, in front of the bathroom. He looked at me. “I think… I think if we were in the shower.”
I swallowed. “Okay. I guess that might make it easier for you.”
He gave me a nervous smile.
I wanted to back out. I wanted to run away. I tried to swallow again, but my mouth was dry. I tried to speak, and no sound came out.
“Just be patient with me,” he whispered. “If I could do this with anyone, I could do it with you.”
I nodded slowly. Okay, fine. I’d try it, if he wanted me to. Maybe it was better this way, anyhow. This wasn’t the way it had been before, when I was so desperate to make our relationship work. This was now, after the entire world had exploded, and I was living in the ruins. What could possibly get worse now? Everything in my life was already shit.
We went into the bathroom.
He dropped my hand, and we stood in front of Miles’s bare, but impeccably clean, sink, facing each other.
“So,” he said. “What now?”
“Well, I guess we should take off our clothes.” It all felt so awkward and stupid, not at all the way sex should feel. I grabbed him, pressing against him and kissing him again.
He stiffened.
I let go of him.
“Sorry.” He kissed me again, mouth closed, eyes slammed shut. Our dry lips met and stuck together for a moment, and then he pulled away.
“Never mind,” I said. “Don’t worry about the kissing.” I reached down to grasp the edge of my shirt.
He held up a hand. “Wait. Maybe…” He reached over and flicked off the lights.
The room was bathed in darkness. Now, Miles was only a silhouette in front of me.
He shifted, a shadow against the shadows. “I’m going to turn on the shower,” he said. “You can go ahead now. Get undressed.”
But I didn’t. I listened as the shower came on. I felt the change in the air as the steam began to rise. Miles didn’t turn to look at me. He faced away from me and methodically removed his clothing, folding each article of clothing and placing it on top of his clothes hamper as he did.
His body was beautiful. I couldn’t see him clearly, but I could see the slopes and swells of his muscular back and shoulders in the scant light. The curve of his ass, shapely and strong.
My jaw worked. I was turned on, I realized. All it took was a shadowy look at naked Miles, and I wanted him.
“Are you sti
ll dressed?” His voice was barely there, and he wasn’t looking at me.
“I…” I yanked my shirt over my head. I felt self-conscious, so I folded it. I folded my shirt, my bra, my pants, and my panties. With each piece of clothing I removed, I got more turned on. I wanted him. I’d always wanted this man, and now he was finally going to let me have him, and I didn’t know if I could handle it. I couldn’t speak.
When I was completely undressed, I stepped next to him. We stood in front of the shower, and I looked up at him.
He glanced at me sidelong, his gaze slipping over my body before looking away. Then he tore aside the shower curtain, and he threw himself inside. “Come on,” he said in a choked voice.
It wasn’t the reaction I wanted. I wanted him to find my body as attractive as I found his. I knew he couldn’t help it, but it was still a familiar stab of pain that fractured through my body.
I waited for several seconds before I joined him inside the shower.
The water was too hot, and I cried out when it touched me.
“Sorry,” Miles muttered. He was bent over already, adjusting the faucet. “I didn’t mean for it to be so hot.”
Steam swirled around us in the darkness, making it even harder to see. I wasn’t sure I believed him. Maybe he did want it this hot. The hot water would scald away the messiness of our union. The steam would obscure our sight. Maybe this was his way of making the whole process disinfected, dark, and anonymous. Maybe the only way he could face it was by not facing it.
“We don’t have to do this,” I whispered, my voice barely audible over the spray of the shower.
Having adjusted the temperature, he faced me. “Please let me try.”
I nodded, but for some reason, I wanted to cry.
“Ivy?”
Oh, right. He couldn’t see me nodding. “Yes, okay.”
I heard him taking a shaky breath, and then his hands were on my skin, smoothing over my shoulders.
I gasped. His touch sent shivers through me, even though it was perfunctory and rigid.
His hands slid lower, over my chest, until he cupped my breasts with both hands.
I sighed, because that felt nice too.
But then I caught sight of his expression, even in the shadowed bathroom, and I could see that he looked like he was concentrating very hard. He wasn’t enjoying himself at all.
Skin and Blond (Blond Noir Mysteries Book 1) Page 25